Saturday, June 13, 2009

Quince – The Devotion Dance

A mysterious traveler, shirtless and female, on horseback, journeying through the woods adorns the cover of Quince’s Devotion Dance. Like the quirky cover, which as you can see above, looks to be a mixture of photo and paper collage, the lyrics to this CD are full of weirdness, endearing weirdness. The opening song, “The Desert” goes starts with dogs barking and goes, “I have heart disease and chicken knees/I used to water the desert/would you believe.” Now, there’s a change I’m hearing that wrong, and water could be wander, and chicken knees something else entirely, but it’s still something sweet that rhymes.

The singer’s voice helps propel the offbeat lyrics along, it’s somewhere between throaty and charming. The band plays an electronic funk, a mixture of genres that never sounds like straightforward rock. It’s always tantalizing, especially the “remix” tracks that highlight the electronic elements of the songs, working with delay and satisfaction in slow motion.